After a preparatory month of preseason scrimmages and tournaments, the JV orange volleyball team suffered a despairing loss to the Vandegrift Vipers 0-2, on Tuesday, Aug. 27 at home. Although both teams put up a valiant effort towards claiming both sets, the Vipers pushed past the Warrior’s attempts to gain the upper hand.
“[The game] was a little rough, but I am proud of us for fighting in the first set,” Defensive Specialist Avnee Upadhye ‘27 said. “I am [also] excited for the rest of the season because I know we’re going to show up.”
Starting the match-long series of point-to-point competitions, the Warriors secured the first point in the first few seconds of the game to try and set the tone for the rest of the game. However, this victory was shortlived as the Vipers proved their strength, equalizing the score, 1-1, all inside the first minute. The Warriors and Vipers remained neck and neck with the score never diverging past one or two points, a continuous trend throughout the first set. However as the set progressed, the short-lived rallies shifted into more powerful, longer attempts by both teams to secure points. Gaining their bearings midway through the set, both the Vipers and Warriors had to up their energy, technique, and morale to chase points in an attempt to stay in the game.
“I feel like, overall, we did good,” Middle Blocker Chaitra Surapaneni said. “But we [definitely] needed more energy, although we did get some good points.”
The dominant theme of the game, aggressiveness, was a goal both teams pursued with everything they could. However, no one side was able to hold on to their aggressive offense for the whole game. Rather, both teams toggled between offensive and defensive formations, with the first set seeing both teams vie for the upper hand, but being unable to retain it. Towards the end of the set, Westwood started to feel the pressure and began to fall behind, loosening the margin up to seven points. As soon as the Warriors begin losing their grip on their calculated aggressiveness the Vipers, in turn, increase theirs; winning the set by a margin of three, 25-22.
“We just tried to be as aggressive as possible by running fast plays, which is just a term that we use to [describe where] the setter kind of feeds the hand into the hitters,” Upadhye said. “That would have helped us put down more aggressive balls.”
Renewing their morale and energy at the beginning of the second set as the Warriors scored the first point of the second half. However, much like the first set, the Vipers retaliate by securing two points of their own quickly after. While both sets saw the teams chasing one another for points, the second set was much slower and dragged out. Soon the pattern was broken by the series of high-powered rallies that emerged from the Vipers. Taking up almost a minute at a time per rally, the Vipers and Warriors battled neck and neck for these hard-fought points. Eventually, Vandergrift powered through Westwood’s defenses to raise the score 22-16, in favor of Vandegrift. Although the Warriors attempted a comeback, they lost the set 17-25, and the game 0-2.
“I think I expected to go in with our best foot forward,” Upadhye said. “We found that energy like mid-set in the first set, and I think in the future, we just need to [make sure] to do that again.”
The Warriors will play their next home game against Hutto on Tuesday, Sept. 3 at 5:30 p.m.
